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It was not spectacularly successful. Germany continues to pollute more than France, with roughly 65% of its electricity generation coming from fossil fuels [1].

It was not spectacularly successful. Germany continues to pollute more than France, with roughly 65% of its electricity generation coming from fossil fuels [1]. In France, nuclear power generates 72% of electricity and fossil fuels account for 9% [2]. And yet, Germans pay twice the rate of France for electricity. It is the worst of both worlds: higher costs and higher carbon emissions. > So if you want to build energy infrastructure in 1980, sure, go ahead and choose nuclear over renewables. If you want to do it now, that choice would be crazy. Did technology magically get worse from 1980? Did the French somehow forget how to build power plants? Nuclear energy projects were cheap during the 1980s because France built a large number of a handful of plant designs. Modern plants are usually one-off projects with a single digit number of plants built of a given design. Building a dozen of the same reactors, turbines, etc. is much cheaper than building one. Political opposition has meant that only small allocations of funds have been dedicated towards nuclear power, so serialized production has not been done recently. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Germany 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_France https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_France

pfdietz 7y ago
It was spectacularly successful in driving down the cost of PV. > Did technology magically get worse from 1980? Nothing magic about what happened. Did you expect the relative rankings of technologies to remain fixed and unchanging across the decades? Nuclear is now a clear loser technology, far more expensive than renewables. Why would anyone want to invest now in the loser technology? What weird psychological phenomenon is driving this fixation?
- manfredo 7y ago
  The only measures in which intermittent sources beat nuclear is nameplate capacity. Net generation is a fraction of that for intermittent sources. The capacity factor (as in, what percentage of it's nameplate capacity is actually generates in real world use cases) of intermittent sources is low,1/4 and 1/3 for solar and wind. For nuclear it's over 90% [1]. People keep saying that intermittent sources are winners and that nuclear is a losing technology. Real world experience says otherwise. The only way intermittent sources are feasible is with cheap high capacity energy storage, which has never been built. In fact, Germany has had to build more fossil fuel plants following the closure of nuclear facilities. If we want to replace all electricity generation with carbon free sources nuclear is the only known way to do that (besides geography-dependent sources like hydroelectricity and geothermal power). If there's some psychological fixation at hand here, it's the aversion to nuclear power and draw to intermittent sources despite the unsolved fundamental limitations of the latter. 1. https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/what-generation-capacity https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/what-generation-capacity
  - pfdietz 7y ago
    Not sure what you mean by "nameplate capacity there", but renewables beat nuclear in at least three ways: The first is Levelized Cost of Energy (total cost, divided by total energy generated.) For solar and wind this is current 3-4x better than new nuclear construction. This is an enormous difference. The second is time to market. Renewables can be brought online much faster than a nuclear plant. This (along with staged introduction) allows renewables to track actual demand rather than needing to be able to predict future demand. Failure to do that was the cause of much utility pain in the first nuclear era, including the bankruptcy of the WPPSS ("Whoops"). Demand for electricity suddenly stopped growing. The same dynamic occurred more recently as the "nuclear renaissance" collided with suddenly cheap natural gas. The final metric by which renewables are destroying nuclear is rate of improvement. Renewables have shown strong and consistent experience effects. Solar improves in cost by ~20% for each doubling of cumulative installed capacity. Nuclear, on the other hand, has not consistently shown any experience effects. This is likely related to the fundamental complexity of large, integrated nuclear systems, vs. the improvement trends seen in design and manufacture of small, highly replicated systems (a phenomenon well known in Silicon Valley).
    - manfredo 7y ago
      Nameplate capacity is the generated capacity without accounting for intermittency in power generation. The reality is, plants do not generate their full capacity for the entirety of their operation. > The second is time to market. Renewables can be brought online much faster than a nuclear plant. This (along with staged introduction) allows renewables to track actual demand rather than needing to be able to predict future demand. Failure to do that was the cause of much utility pain in the first nuclear era, including the bankruptcy of the WPPSS ("Whoops"). Demand for electricity suddenly stopped growing. The same dynamic occurred more recently as the "nuclear renaissance" collided with suddenly cheap natural gas. You're hand-waving away the fact that intermittent sources are exactly that: intermittent. And what happens when the demand for energy occurs when the renewable supply of energy is not available? Germany and California both encountered the same problem, and they both used the same solution: use fossil fuels. That is why Germany's carbon emissions have remained flat for the last decade [1] despite renewable power generation doubling in the same period of time[2]. It doesn't matter how much energy wind and solar produces if you need to revert to hydrocarbons in the evening. The levels of energy storage necessary to run an electrical entirely on renewable energy remain the stuff of science fiction. Batteries are possible, but using those would cause the price of electric vehicles to increase considerably and ensure that hydrocarbons remain the primary fuel for cars. California uses hydroelectric storage, but the efficiency is extremely low (over 70% energy lost). By comparison, nuclear plants provide continuous output throughout the day. You paint this as a negative, when it's really not. If excess power is generated, then use that excess power to sequester carbon. Too much energy is an easy problem to solve, too little energy is not. > The final metric by which renewables are destroying nuclear is rate of improvement. Renewables have shown strong and consistent experience effects. Solar improves in cost by ~20% for each doubling of cumulative installed capacity. Nuclear, on the other hand, has not consistently shown any experience effects. This is likely related to the fundamental complexity of large, integrated nuclear systems, vs. the improvement trends seen in design and manufacture of small, highly replicated systems (a phenomenon well known in Silicon Valley). This is exactly that I explained in my comment above. Most nuclear power in the United States has been one-off projects to the public's unwillingness to see widespread adoption. By comparison, countries that used serialized plant designs (most famously, France) saw much cheaper nuclear power construction. Yes, replicated designs are much cheaper to build than unique designs. That is why nuclear power was so cost-effective in France while so much more expensive in the United States. The reality is that there are only two proven methods of powering nations with carbon-free energy: Geographically dependent solutions like hydroelectric power and geothermal power. And nuclear power. 1. https://www.economist.com/europe/2017/11/09/germany-is-missing-its-emissions-targets https://www.economist.com/europe/2017/11/09/germany-is-missi... 2. https://www.economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/1280-width/images/2019/09/articles/body/20190921_euc761.png https://www.economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/128...

pfdietz 7y ago

It was spectacularly successful in driving down the cost of PV. > Did technology magically get worse from 1980? Nothing magic about what happened. Did you expect the relative rankings of technologies to remain fixed and unchanging across the decades? Nuclear is now a clear loser technology, far more expensive than renewables. Why would anyone want to invest now in the loser technology? What weird psychological phenomenon is driving this fixation?

manfredo 7y ago
The only measures in which intermittent sources beat nuclear is nameplate capacity. Net generation is a fraction of that for intermittent sources. The capacity factor (as in, what percentage of it's nameplate capacity is actually generates in real world use cases) of intermittent sources is low,1/4 and 1/3 for solar and wind. For nuclear it's over 90% [1]. People keep saying that intermittent sources are winners and that nuclear is a losing technology. Real world experience says otherwise. The only way intermittent sources are feasible is with cheap high capacity energy storage, which has never been built. In fact, Germany has had to build more fossil fuel plants following the closure of nuclear facilities. If we want to replace all electricity generation with carbon free sources nuclear is the only known way to do that (besides geography-dependent sources like hydroelectricity and geothermal power). If there's some psychological fixation at hand here, it's the aversion to nuclear power and draw to intermittent sources despite the unsolved fundamental limitations of the latter. 1. https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/what-generation-capacity https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/what-generation-capacity
- pfdietz 7y ago
  Not sure what you mean by "nameplate capacity there", but renewables beat nuclear in at least three ways: The first is Levelized Cost of Energy (total cost, divided by total energy generated.) For solar and wind this is current 3-4x better than new nuclear construction. This is an enormous difference. The second is time to market. Renewables can be brought online much faster than a nuclear plant. This (along with staged introduction) allows renewables to track actual demand rather than needing to be able to predict future demand. Failure to do that was the cause of much utility pain in the first nuclear era, including the bankruptcy of the WPPSS ("Whoops"). Demand for electricity suddenly stopped growing. The same dynamic occurred more recently as the "nuclear renaissance" collided with suddenly cheap natural gas. The final metric by which renewables are destroying nuclear is rate of improvement. Renewables have shown strong and consistent experience effects. Solar improves in cost by ~20% for each doubling of cumulative installed capacity. Nuclear, on the other hand, has not consistently shown any experience effects. This is likely related to the fundamental complexity of large, integrated nuclear systems, vs. the improvement trends seen in design and manufacture of small, highly replicated systems (a phenomenon well known in Silicon Valley).
  - manfredo 7y ago
    Nameplate capacity is the generated capacity without accounting for intermittency in power generation. The reality is, plants do not generate their full capacity for the entirety of their operation. > The second is time to market. Renewables can be brought online much faster than a nuclear plant. This (along with staged introduction) allows renewables to track actual demand rather than needing to be able to predict future demand. Failure to do that was the cause of much utility pain in the first nuclear era, including the bankruptcy of the WPPSS ("Whoops"). Demand for electricity suddenly stopped growing. The same dynamic occurred more recently as the "nuclear renaissance" collided with suddenly cheap natural gas. You're hand-waving away the fact that intermittent sources are exactly that: intermittent. And what happens when the demand for energy occurs when the renewable supply of energy is not available? Germany and California both encountered the same problem, and they both used the same solution: use fossil fuels. That is why Germany's carbon emissions have remained flat for the last decade [1] despite renewable power generation doubling in the same period of time[2]. It doesn't matter how much energy wind and solar produces if you need to revert to hydrocarbons in the evening. The levels of energy storage necessary to run an electrical entirely on renewable energy remain the stuff of science fiction. Batteries are possible, but using those would cause the price of electric vehicles to increase considerably and ensure that hydrocarbons remain the primary fuel for cars. California uses hydroelectric storage, but the efficiency is extremely low (over 70% energy lost). By comparison, nuclear plants provide continuous output throughout the day. You paint this as a negative, when it's really not. If excess power is generated, then use that excess power to sequester carbon. Too much energy is an easy problem to solve, too little energy is not. > The final metric by which renewables are destroying nuclear is rate of improvement. Renewables have shown strong and consistent experience effects. Solar improves in cost by ~20% for each doubling of cumulative installed capacity. Nuclear, on the other hand, has not consistently shown any experience effects. This is likely related to the fundamental complexity of large, integrated nuclear systems, vs. the improvement trends seen in design and manufacture of small, highly replicated systems (a phenomenon well known in Silicon Valley). This is exactly that I explained in my comment above. Most nuclear power in the United States has been one-off projects to the public's unwillingness to see widespread adoption. By comparison, countries that used serialized plant designs (most famously, France) saw much cheaper nuclear power construction. Yes, replicated designs are much cheaper to build than unique designs. That is why nuclear power was so cost-effective in France while so much more expensive in the United States. The reality is that there are only two proven methods of powering nations with carbon-free energy: Geographically dependent solutions like hydroelectric power and geothermal power. And nuclear power. 1. https://www.economist.com/europe/2017/11/09/germany-is-missing-its-emissions-targets https://www.economist.com/europe/2017/11/09/germany-is-missi... 2. https://www.economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/1280-width/images/2019/09/articles/body/20190921_euc761.png https://www.economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/128...